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Q: Ansible called by Vagrant does not prompt for vault password Summary
I have a Vagrantfile provisioning a Virtualbox VM with Ansible. The Ansible playbook contains an Ansible Vault-encrypted variable. My problem is that Vagrant provisioning does not prompt for the password although I pass the option to do so.
Minimal, complete example
Vagrantfile:
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
    config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
        # Build a master VM for this box and clone it for individual VMs
        vb.linked_clone = true
    end
    config.vm.box = "bento/ubuntu-16.04"
    config.vm.hostname = "test-vm"

    config.vm.provision :ansible do |ansible|
        ansible.verbose = true
        ansible.playbook = "playbook.yml"
        ansible.ask_vault_pass = true
#       ansible.raw_arguments = --ask-vault-pass
#       ansible.raw_arguments = ["--vault-id", "@prompt"]
#       ansible.raw_arguments = ["--vault-id", "dev@prompt"]
    end
end

playbook.yml:
---
- name: Test
  hosts: all
  vars:
    foo: !vault |
          $ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
          65306264626234353434613262613835353463346435343735396138336362643535656233393466
          6331393337353837653239616331373463313665396431390a313338333735346237363435323066
          66323435333331616639366536376639626636373038663233623861653363326431353764623665
          3663636162366437650a383435666537626564393866643461393739393434346439346530336364
          3639

  tasks:
    - name: print foo's value
      debug:
        msg: "foo -> {{ foo }}"

The Ansible Vault password is abc.
When I call vagrant up on first execution of the Vagrantfile or later vagrant provision I do not get the expected prompt to enter the password. Instead the task print foo's value prints the (red) message:
fatal: [default]: FAILED! => {"msg": "Attempting to decrypt but no vault secrets found"}

I also tried the outcommented alternatives in the Vagrantfile to make Ansible prompt for the password. I can see all of them in the ansible-playbook call printed by Vagrant.
Additionally, I tried several options when encrypting foo with ansible-vault encrypt_string, which did not help either.
What can I do to make Ansible prompt for the password when called with Vagrant?
Versions

*

*kubuntu 16.04

*Vagrant 1.8.1 and Vagrant 2.0.0

*Ansible 2.4.0.0

Update
This is the Ansible call as printed by Vagrant:
PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 ANSIBLE_FORCE_COLOR=true ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=false ANSIBLE_SSH_ARGS='-o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s' ansible-playbook --connection=ssh --timeout=30 --ask-vault-pass --limit="default" --inventory-file=/opt/vagrantVM/.vagrant/provisioners/ansible/inventory -v playbook.yml

If I execute this directly without Vagrant the password prompt works as expected! So it must be Vagrant, which somehow suppresses the prompt.

A: In Ansible 2.4.0.0, the Vault password prompt (i.e. --ask-vault-pass) is skipped when no tty is present (there is no execution of getpass.getpass function).
With the Ansible 2.4.0.0 prompt implementation, the Vagrant provisioner integration don't receive an interactive prompt.
Note that --ask-pass and --ask-become-pass implementation haven't changed (i.e. there is no mechanism to skip the getpass function) and are still working fine with Vagrant.
I plan to report the issue upstream to the Ansible project, but for the moment you can resolve the situation by downgrading to Ansible 2.3 (or by using vault_password_file provisioner option instead).
References:

*

*https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/22756/files#diff-bdd6c847fae8976ab8a7259d0b583f34L176

*https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/2924

*See the related Bug Fix Pull Request (#31493) in Ansible project

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Teresa Slawson Clark March 1, 1970 – November 6, 2010
Teresa, daughter of Beverly Young Slawson and Edward Slawson, was born March 1, 1970 in Amarillo, Texas. Teresa worked a variety of jobs including construction. After a serious car accident, Teresa was more of a stay-at-home mom and wife. She did volunteer work at the Neighborhood Center in Mount Ayr.
Teresa married Douglas Harl Clark on December 11, 2008 and after living in Decatur county, they moved to Mount Ayr in 2009. Teresa enjoyed living in Mount Ayr and getting to know her neighbors. She was a good mother and wife and worked at keeping a clean and good home.
Teresa died suddenly at her home in Mount Ayr on November 6, 2010. She was preceded in death by her father and grandparents.
Survivors include her husband, Douglas Clark, son, Morgan Wensel and mother, Beverly Carroll, all of Mount Ayr, Iowa; two brothers, Paul Sawyer of California and Mark Sawyer of Texas, and other relatives and friends.
A memorial fund has been established to the family.
Services will be held at Watson-Armstrong Funeral Home in Mount Ayr Saturday, November 13, 2010, at 2 p.m. Rev. Chris Conklin will officiate. Musical selections will be 'Amazing Grace,' 'Stand By Me,' 'The Dance' and 'Unanswered Prayers.'
Honorary pallbearers include Leonard Clark, Brian Johnson, David Vanderjagt, Kenny Jones, J.R. Sinclair and Dwayne Clark.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Venetian Pool is one of a kind pool and one of the biggest tourist attractions in Coral Gables, just minutes from Downtown Miami. The pool was created from a coral rock quarry and holds 820,000 gallons of water. Yes, that's a lot of water for a swimming pool. The pool is fed with spring water from an underground aquifer and gets drained and refilled daily during the spring and summer months.
But it's not just a gigantic pool. There are two historic lookout towers, two waterfalls, cave-like grottos, palm trees, and a bridge. The Venetian Pool opened in 1924 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It's the only pool on the register. During my first visit to the pool, they were holding their annual dog swim day.
A few weeks back I was asked by a team member from Rove.me to use one of my photos of the Venetian Pool, I posted on Flickr, in one of their posts about the location.
If you are planning to visit the Venetian Pool, you should stop by at the Biltmore Hotel as well. You can take a free tour of the hotel as well.


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Shows » A Baker and Farmer Help Sharp-tailed Grouse
A Baker and Farmer Help Sharp-tailed Grouse
Cooperation can help birds!
© Paul Bannick	View Large
A determined dry-land wheat farmer and a visionary baker are trying to help a bird in trouble, the Sharp-tailed Grouse. The farmer, Wade Troutman, leaves 30% of the land he farms in its natural condition. The undisturbed patches of sagebrush habitat provide cover and food for grouse and their young. The baker, Jeff Weissman, owner of Great Harvest Bread in north Seattle, offers Wade's Wheat Bread in his bakery. "Community supported agriculture" projects help farmers such as Wade Troutman. You can probably find a group near you!
An Interview with Jeff Weissman
By Chris Peterson
This is the story of a determined dry-land wheat farmer, a visionary baker, and a bird in trouble, the Sharp-tailed Grouse. The farmer, Wade Troutman, leaves 30% of the land he farms in its natural condition. The undisturbed patches of sagebrush habitat provide cover and food for grouse and their young.
[Call of the Sharp-tailed Grouse]
But to farm this way, Wade needs a market for his wheat.
The baker Jeff Weissman, owner of Great Harvest Bread in north Seattle, says:
T12 2:06 … Wade… cares about the land… he cares about the birds…T12 2:25 …That fits in really tightly with what I believe in… That's the kind of bakery I'm trying to actually operate here… 2:33 I want one where the farmer can make a living… I want one where the farmer cares about the land and he's a steward of the land… and Wade is a phenomenal steward…
T18:12 … What I would really love to see happen is to have customers lined up out the door wanting to support this concept…
That's where you and I come in. We have power as consumers.
T14:08 [Tess] "Hi! Welcome to Great Harvest. Can I get you a slice of bread?" [Sound of cash register…T13:37]
It's good to learn where your food comes from. You might find a way to support those who, while feeding people, protect habitat and birds… like the Sharp-tailed Grouse.
[Repeat call of Sharp-tailed Grouse]
There's more at our website, BirdNote.org. I'm Mary McCann.
Sound of Sharp-tailed Grouse provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York and recorded by G.A. Keller.
All other sounds recorded by C. Peterson
© 2011 Tune In to Nature.org March 2011 Narrator: Mary McCann
ID# SotB-STGR-02-2011-03-26
http://www.greatharvestbreadseattle.com/index.html
"Community Supported Agriculture" - Find a CSA near you!
Sharp-tailed Grouse - More at All About Birds
Great Harvest Bread in Seattle
Chris Peterson
Paul Bannick
Sharp-tailed Grouse lek 1280x720: Shooting with Sparky
environmental champion, habitat protection, Pacific Northwest, Washington, State of the Birds, grassland
By BirdNote Gallery
Kingfisher Perches
For better and for worse, humans can have a huge impact on the lives of birds. One positive impact...


We encourage you to find and follow us on social media. Remember to keep posts displaying in your news feed, to like and/or comment. A letter has also been sent home which has the Department of Education and Training 'Acceptable Guidelines for Use' for your information.


Provided, That nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent an individual from quitting his employment at any time: Provided further, That nothing contained in this section shall be construed to make unlawful a refusal by any person to enter upon the premises of any employer (other than his own employer), if the employees of such employer are engaged in a strike ratified or approved by a representative of a collective bargaining unit which such employer is required to recognize under this act: Provided further, That nothing in this section shall prohibit the extension of picketing or other legitimate labor union activity to the plant or premises of another employer if the employer with whom a labor union is engaged in a direct legitimate dispute shall subcontract to such other employer any portion of his production in an attempt to avoid the consequences of labor activity in such dispute.
History: L. 1955, ch. 252, § 4; July 1.


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Home › News › The Demand is Surging for SiC Substrates and Power Semiconductors
The Demand is Surging for SiC Substrates and Power Semiconductors
Note: This blog was adapted from an original article written by Mark LaPedus at Semiconductor Engineering.
The demand for silicon carbide (SiC) substrates and power semiconductors is surging driven by the rapid growth of electric vehicles (EVs) and other systems.
MSE Supplies is a supplier of high quality SiC substrates and wafers including sizes of 2", 3", 4" and 6" with both N type and Semi-insulating type available. Its SiC substrates and wafers have been used by many SiC-based semiconductor devices developers and manufacturers.
Because of the high demand, there is a tight supply of SiC substrates and wafers and SiC-based devices in the market, prompting some vendors to add fab capacity in the midst of a tricky wafer-size transition. Some SiC device makers are transitioning from 4 to 6 inch wafers in the fab.
Both low cost SiC wafers (dummy grade) for equipment and process development and production grade SiC wafers are available from MSE Supplies. Please contact our scientists and engineers today to discuss your needs for SiC substrates and wafers.
SiC is a compound semiconductor material based on silicon and carbon. In the production flow, specialized SiC substrates and wafers are developed and then processed in a fab, resulting in a SiC-based power semiconductor. Many SiC-based power semis and rival technologies are specialized transistors, which switch current in a device at high voltages. They are used in the field of power electronics, where the devices convert and control the electricity in systems.
SiC stands out because it's a wide band-gap technology. Compared to conventional silicon-based devices, SiC has 10 times the breakdown field strength and 3 times the thermal conductivity, making it ideal for high-voltage applications, such as power supplies, solar inverters, trains and wind turbines. In another application, SiC is used to make LEDs.
The big growth opportunity is in automotive—especially electric vehicles. SiC-based power semiconductors are used in the on-board charging units in electric cars, while the technology is making inroads in a key part of the system—the traction inverter. The traction inverter provides traction to the motor to propel the vehicle.
For this application, Tesla is using SiC power devices in some models, while other electric car makers are evaluating the technology. "The automotive market is definitely the center of focus when people discuss SiC power devices. SiC activities from the pioneers, such as Toyota and Tesla, have brought a lot of excitement and noise to the market," said Hong Lin, an analyst at Yole Développement. "SiC MOSFETs have potential within the automotive market. But there are several challenges, such as cost, long-term reliability and module design."
Driven by the automotive and other markets, the SiC power device business reached $302 million in 2017, up 22% from $248 million in 2016, according to Yole. "We expect a jump in 2018, driven by the automotive industry with the ramp up of Tesla's Model 3, which already adopted SiC MOSFET modules," Lin said.
The SiC power semiconductor market is projected to reach $1.5 billion by 2023, according to Yole. Suppliers of SiC devices include Fuji, Infineon, Littelfuse, Mitsubishi, On Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, Rohm, Toshiba and Wolfspeed. Wolfspeed is part of Cree. X-Fab is the lone foundry vendor in SiC. MSE Supplies is one of the main suppliers of the SiC substrates and wafers. Other SiC substrates and wafers suppliers include Cree, II-IV, and Dow Corning.
Making SiC
Power electronics play a key role in the world's electrical infrastructure. The technology is used in industrial (motor drives), transportation (cars, trains), computing (power supplies) and renewable energy (solar, wind). Power electronics convert or transform alternating and direct current (AC and DC) in systems.
For these applications, the industry uses various power semiconductors. Some power semis are specialized transistors, which operate as a switch in systems. They allow the power to flow in the "on" state and stop it in the "off" state.
Power semis are fabricated at mature nodes. These devices are designed to boost the efficiencies and minimize the energy losses in systems. Typically, they are rated by voltages and other specs, not by process geometries.
For years, the dominant power semi technology has been (and still is) based on silicon, namely the power MOSFET and the insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT). Considered the least expensive and most popular device, power MOSFETs are used in adapters, power supplies and other products. They are used in applications up to 900 volts.
In conventional MOSFET devices, the source and drain are on top of the device. In comparison, power MOSFETs feature a vertical structure, where the source and drain are located on opposite sides of the device. A vertical structure enables the device to handle higher voltages.
The leading midrange power semiconductor device is the IGBT, which combines the characteristics of MOSFETs and bipolar transistors. IGBTs are used for 400-volt to 10-kilovolt applications.
The problem is that power MOSFETs and IGBTs are reaching their theoretic limits and suffer from unwanted energy losses. A device may experience energy losses for two reasons—conduction and switching. Conduction loss is due to the resistance in the device, while switching losses occur during the on and off states.
"From 5 volts to a few hundred volts, silicon has been a good technology," said Guy Moxey, senior director of power marketing and applications at Wolfspeed. "When you get from 600 to 900 volts, silicon MOSFETs are good but they start losing some steam. IGBTs are good heavy lifters, but they are not quick or efficient."
That's where SiC fits in. Power semis based on gallium-nitride (GaN) are also emerging. Both GaN and SiC are wide bandgap technologies. Silicon has a bandgap of 1.1 eV. In comparison, SiC has a bandgap of 3.3 eV, while GaN is 3.4 eV.
MSE Supplies is also a supplier of GaN substrates.
"The electronic bandgap is the energy gap between the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band in solid materials," according to Landa Culbertson, a contributor for Mouser Electronics in a blog. "It is the bandgap that gives semiconductors the ability to switch currents on and off as desired in order to achieve a given electrical function."
Wide band-gap devices have several advantages. For example, electric vehicles are propelled by the motor drive, which traditionally have used power MOSFETs or IGBTs. "If you replace that motor drive with SiC, you get 80% lower loss in that drive," Wolfspeed's Moxey said. "It means that you can have a smaller battery for the same range. A smaller battery means lower cost."
SiC-based power semiconductors, meanwhile, are used in 600-volt to 10-kilovolt applications. "600 to 1,700 volts catch most SiC applications. When you go to 3.3- to 10-kilovolts, it's pretty specialized. It's wind power and small grids," he said.
In the power arena, GaN is used in 30- to 600-volt applications. "GaN and SiC are complementary rather than competitive technologies," he added.
Both GaN and SiC devices are faster than silicon, but they are also more expensive. "At this moment, a single SiC MOSFET device has a cost-per-ampere more than five times higher than a similar IGBT," said Elena Barbarini, head of department devices at System Plus Consulting, part of Yole.
The first SiC-based device appeared in 2002 with the introduction of SiC diodes, followed by SIC power MOSFETs in 2011. Like power MOSFETs, SiC-based devices are vertical structures.
A SiC power MOSFET is a power switching transistor based on SiC. "A diode is a device that passes electricity in one direction and blocks it in the opposite direction," explained Mitch Van Ochten, an applications engineer at Rohm.
Regardless, SiC power semis are gaining steam. "Silicon plays a huge role for power devices," said Mike Rosa, director of strategy and technical marketing for Applied Materials. "But when you talk about higher power and lower weight, manufacturers are looking at materials like silicon carbide."
SiC-based devices are produced in a fab, where the industry continues to make a wafer size transition. "SiC is available on both 4- or 6-inch," Rosa said. "The industry is just kicking the tires for 8 inch."
In fact, Cree has made the transition from 4- (100mm) to 6-inch (150mm) wafers in the fab. Rohm and others are in the middle of the transition. SiC on 200mm wafers won't happen for some time.
Generally, when moving to a new wafer size, you get 2.2X more die per wafer. A larger wafer size reduces the overall production costs.
In the digital CMOS world, chipmakers made the transition from 4- to 6-inch several years ago. It sounds simple to make the same transition for SiC, but there are some challenges. "Although mass production of SiC power devices on 150mm wafers has been proven for close to five years, the availability and cost of high-performance, low-defect density SiC substrates at 150mm still remains a barrier to adoption," said David Haynes, senior director of strategic marketing at Lam Research.
"That said, as the transition to 150mm mass production is realized, the associated cost savings will help drive commercial viability in an increasing number of applications," Haynes said. "Another example is the roadmap for SiC MOSFET technologies. Planar SiC MOSFETs have been proven in commercial applications for some time, but today there is a significant push to the development and commercialization of SiC trench MOSFETs, which can deliver significantly lower specific on-resistance when compared to planar structures."
In the fab, meanwhile, SiC-based power devices generally follow the same process flow as silicon-based chips. But there are also some differences, such as the development of the SiC substrate.
For silicon-based chips, the first step in the process is the development of a raw silicon wafer. For this, a silicon seed crystal is lowered into a crucible and heated. The resulting body is called an ingot, which is pulled and sliced into silicon wafers at various sizes from 300mm and smaller.
For silicon carbide, though, SiC bulk crystals are lowered into a crucible and then heated. The resulting ingot is pulled and sliced into wafers.
For years, SiC bulk crystals were plagued with defects called micropipes, which are micron-sized holes that run through the crystals. "Micropipe defects and other defects that will kill the device operation are now all but eliminated. Materials suppliers are now offering zero-micropipe products," said Peter Gammon, an associate professor at the University of Warwick.
Once the SiC wafers have been developed, the next step is to form an SiC substrate. The raw wafers are inserted in a deposition system, where SiC epitaxial layers are grown on the wafer, thereby forming a SiC substrate. Then, the SiC substrate is processed in the fab.
SiC requires a selective annealing process. "For power devices, the current flow is through the wafer. You need a good electrical conduction with the metal interface," said Hans-Ulrich Zühlke, product manager at 3D-Micromac. "We only heat up the backside of the wafer to anneal the Ohmic contact to make a metal silicon carbide interface."
Finally, the wafer is inspected for defects using an inspection system. SiC devices are prone to defects, especially as vendors move to larger wafer sizes. "There is a lot of defectivity," said Lena Nicolaides, vice president and general manager at the LS-SWIFT division at KLA-Tencor. "Our inspection systems are used at a lower wavelength (for SiC). They are able to find discontinuities in the substrate."
SiC in EVs
Today, meanwhile, automotive is the fastest growing segment in the overall semiconductor sector. "More and more customers are redefining their product portfolios to accommodate the IoT and/or automotive markets," said Walter Ng, vice president of business development at UMC. "Our automotive-related revenue has grown significantly this year, and we expect it to continue in that direction for the foreseeable future."
SiC also is seeing growth in automotive, especially for electric vehicles. In total, electric vehicles, including battery-electric cars and hybrids, represent about 1% of the world's cars sold today. But driven by China and other nations, the electric vehicle market will grow from 1.6 million vehicles in 2018 to 2 million in 2019, according to Frost & Sullivan. By 2025, the market is expected to reach 25 million units, according to Frost & Sullivan.
"The adoption of electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles are certainly becoming a reality," Lam's Haynes said. "However, the timing and rate of adoption varies significantly around the world and is closely linked to government policy and the consumers' access to appropriately priced products and charging infrastructure. Without a doubt, the China market is a key growth engine for electric vehicle adoption."
Within the electric vehicle itself, the system has several domains, such as the entertainment system, on-board charger, traction inverter and others. The traction inverter converts energy from the battery to the traction motor, which then propels the vehicle.
SiC is making inroads in the on-board charger, DC-to-DC converter and traction inverter. The on-board charger charges the vehicle from a power grid.
Fig. 1: Power Electronics for Electric Vehicles Source: STMicroelectronics
A DC-to-DC converter takes the battery voltage and then steps it down to a lower voltage. This is used to control the windows, heater and other functions.
The big battle among device makers is taking place in the traction inverter, especially for pure battery-electric vehicles. Generally, hybrids are moving towards a 48-volt battery. For the power inventor, SiC is generally too expensive for hybrids, although there are exceptions to the rule.
Like the hybrid, pure battery-electric vehicles consist of a traction inverter. A high-voltage bus connects the inverter to the battery and motor. The battery provides the energy for the car. The motor, which propels the vehicle, has three connections or wires.
The three connections extend to the traction inverter, which are then networked to six switches within the inverter module.
Each switch is actually a power semiconductor, which serves as an electric switch in the system. For the switch, the incumbent technology is the IGBT. So the traction inverter may consist of six IGBTs, which are rated at 1,200 volts.
"In reality, they are electric switches. We have a choice of technologies for these electric switches, which enable and disable the various motor windings and effectively cause the motor to rotate," Rohm's Van Ochten said. "The most popular electrical semiconductor switch for this function is called an IGBT. They are used by more than 90% of the vehicle manufacturers out there. They are the cheapest way to switch that battery current into that motor as needed."
There are some tradeoffs using IGBTs, however. "They are probably a third of the price of the latest technology," he said, "but they are slow."
That's where the industry is targeting SiC MOSFETs, which have faster switching speeds than IGBTs. "(SiC MOSFETs) also reduce the switching loss, along with lower conduction loss at low and medium power levels," said Maurizio Ferrara, director of the Wide Bandgap and Power RF business unit at STMicroelectronics. "They can operate at four times the frequency of an IGBT at the same efficiency, resulting in weight, size, and cost reduction due to smaller passives and fewer external components. As a result, SiC MOSFETs can enhance efficiency up to 90% compared to silicon solutions."
So for the traction inverter, it makes sense to move from an IGBT to a SiC MOSFET. But it isn't quite that simple because cost plays a big role in the equation.
Tesla has taken the plunge, however. The company is using SiC MOSFETs from STMicroelectronics in its Model 3, according to Yole, which added that Tesla also is using other suppliers. Other car makers are exploring the technology, as well, although most OEMs are not jumping on the bandwagon due to cost considerations.
Still, there are several ways to make the switch from IGBTs to SiC MOSFETs. According to Rohm, there are a couple of options:
• Keep the IGBT in the system, but replace the silicon diode with a SiC diode.
• Replace both the silicon-based IGBT and diode with SiC-based MOSFETs and diodes.
In the inverter, there are six IGBTs, and each one is accompanied by a separate silicon-based diode. The diode is used for several reasons. "IGBTs do not like it when you put the polarity on or voltage across them," Rohm's Van Ochten said. "So a diode needs to be added across each IGBT to prevent destroying it when you go to shut off the switches."
One way to make the system more efficient is to replace the silicon diodes. "The first step in improving the efficiency of the traction inverter is to leave the IGBTs in there. But then, you put in silicon carbide diodes instead of ordinary silicon diodes," he said. "Silicon carbide diodes have better properties. That will give you a few percent more efficiency."
The ultimate solution is to replace both the IGBTs and silicon diodes with SiC-based diodes and MOSFETs. "SiC, because of the price of the material, is more expensive than silicon. However, if you are switching four or five times faster, you can reduce the cost of the magnetics and capacitors," Wolfspeed's Moxey said.
Where is this all heading? "When we look at the different applications, we expect the charging station and the on-board charger to be the first applications to adopt SiC technologies," said Shawn Slusser, vice president of automotive at Infineon Technologies Americas.
"As to automotive applications, we expect IGBT will dominate the market for the next decade. SiC has advantages in terms of higher efficiency and higher power density, but SiC components cost more. This means the system benefits of reduced size and a smaller battery capacity for the same range need to compensate for the higher cost," Slusser said. "That's why we believe SiC will be first used in on-board chargers, because SiC efficiency at higher switching frequency with smaller passive components compensates for higher SiC device cost. SiC will be introduced in the broad market for main inverter applications for EVs with large batteries, as long as battery cost savings is higher than increased SiC device cost. For EVs with an 800-volt system, there are additional benefits, such as lower charging time, higher inverter efficiency and reduced cable cost."
To be sure, SiC is heating up, and so are electric vehicles. SiC power semis appear to be in the driver's seat—if vendors can drive down their costs. The good news is the rapid expansion of production capacity of SiC substrates and wafers in both 4 inch and 6 inch sizes, which will soon drive down the cost of SiC substrates and wafers. Please contact MSE Supplies today to discuss your needs for SiC substrates and wafers.
Tags: SiC


It's Rabies Awareness Week – Is your pet protected?
A Rabies vaccination is a lifesaver for your pet — and it's the law. Life is unpredictable — add wild or stray animals into the mix, and it can become downright chaotic at times. You can't control what happens to your pet all the time, but you can work toward better outcomes. Keeping your dog and cat up-to-date on Rabies boosters is just one way to protect your pets from an unexpected, aggressive animal encounter.
It looks cute – but this raccoon could be harboring a deadly virus.
Rabies is a fatal viral disease. It is transmitted through saliva (i.e. through biting) and travels through the nerves to the brain. Keep in mind that a pet cannot be tested for Rabies while alive. The test is conducted on the brain tissue of a deceased animal, only. For this reason, once a pet is bitten by an animal suspected of carrying Rabies, the pet is either quarantined and monitored closely for signs of disease (if its vaccine is current) or euthanized and tested for the virus (if the vaccine is lapsed or was never given.) In other words, if your pet is kept current on its vaccination, it is more likely to be spared from automatic euthanasia.
Rabies is considered a zoonotic health risk, since it can be transmitted from animals to humans. The laws requiring Rabies vaccination for dogs and cats are meant to benefit humans, as well. Even if you consider your pet to be 100% indoors-only, it still must receive the vaccination, under the law. Presumably, your pet leaves the house at least once a year to visit the veterinarian. An animal encounter can occur in your yard or at the doctor's office. Or your pet may unexpectedly escape from the house and tangle with another animal. Or perhaps a member of your household will bring a new pet home, without knowing its vaccine or disease-exposure history.
Check your pet's Rabies vaccine status now. Notice when it is due — or if it is overdue, call your veterinarian to schedule a booster. Don't wait: you never know when trouble is hiding just around the corner.
Photo of raccoon by Gaby Müller, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Are you ready if disaster hits? We can help.
We're in for nasty weather this weekend — bad enough that many Neptune Festival events have been cancelled.
So this is an apt time for us to remind you about storm and disaster planning. As a pet owner, you have an extra set of responsibilities, which require extra thought and preparation.
4. Transfer your pet's food to a sturdy, water-proof container, to prevent spoilage.
9. Pick up your copy of "Saving the Whole Family", available at our office for $2. The booklet has tips for owners of dogs, cats, reptiles, horses, and other pets. You'll also find complete guides to building first-aid kits and evacuation kits. Get yours today!
Pick up a booklet today, for just $2. Available at Little Creek Veterinary Clinic.
This post appeared on August 22, 2012.
Many owners of aging pets want to know whether their pet might be suffering from arthritis, a degenerative joint disease that is treatable in its early stages.
Have you noticed changes in your pet's behavior?
Has your pet been injured in the past?
Has your pet been diagnosed with elbow or hip dysplasia?
Answering "yes" to any of these questions should prompt a visit to your veterinarian to have your pet evaluated for arthritis.
Treatment may consist of targeted pain medication, cartilage-boosting nutritional supplements or joint health diets, and physical therapy.
The sooner treatment is begun, the sooner a pet's pain can be managed. Arthritis becomes more severe if left untreated — and more difficult to treat in the later stages. For instance, once cartilage has completely eroded from a joint, it will not return.
If you suspect your pet is having pain or difficulty moving due to arthritis, Contact Us to schedule an examination and consultation today.
*Keep in mind that some symptoms of arthritis mimic those of other diseases. This list is not comprehensive and is not meant to diagnose your pet.
The Seresto 8-month Flea and Tick collars continue to impress our clients with its ease of use and effectiveness against ectoparasites. In response, we are keeping a steady supply of the collars on hand.
Good news! We have also begun carrying the Seresto collars for cats.
Be sure to stop in and grab a collar for your pet today!


text:
Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis
Posted on May 25, 2017 May 25, 2017 by winter oak
Manchester: an explosion of hate and fear
Extremists of the neoliberal "centre"
The CIA and the war of ideas
Enemy of the system – the US campaign against Julian Assange
Money, power and mining
1. Manchester: an explosion of hate and fear
The vile bomb attack in Manchester on May 22 has left a noxious smell of racism and fascism in the British political atmosphere in the election run-up.
Prime Minister Theresa May was very quick to ramp up the terror alert status to "critical" and send the army onto the streets in a bid to show just how strong and stable she is.
The gesture has a hint of coup d'état about it. Even pro-establishment Guardian journo Jonathan Freedland had to admit that troops being deployed in the middle of a general election campaign was "new and unsettling terrain for British democracy".
As Gianfranco Sanguinetti noted, in his book On Terrorism and the State, regarding a similar situation in Italy in the late 1970s: "The reasoning currently in vogue is simple: if you love democracy, you have to defend it; to defend it you have to fight its enemies; to fight the enemies of democracy, no sacrifice is too great: the nobility of the end justifies every means; no democracy for the enemies of democracy! Something which was never essentially a democracy has now visibly ceased being so".
But even worse was to come from media commentators who seem eager to pave the way to a grim authoritarian-capitalist future.
The right-wing Muslim-hating newspaper columnist Katie Hopkins sent a tweet in which she called for a "final solution" – this apparent call for genocide is apparently now the subject of a police enquiry.
Incidentally Hopkins, formerly of The Sun and now with Mail Online and LBC, was sponsored through her university education by the British Army's Intelligence Corps.
Allison Pearson of The Daily Telegraph tweeted:"We need a State of Emergency as France has. We need internment of thousands of terror suspects now to protect our children."
What a bright idea, Allison! Round up those enemies of the state at once!
Meanwhile, Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked, struck an equally fascistic note when he tweeted: "A nation whose children are attacked must take action", adding that "there is a strong justification for hate right now".
O'Neill, and Spiked in general, has a proud history of amplifying authoritarian capitalist viewpoints under the cloak of a seemingly "radical" background – Spiked used to be called LM, or Living Marxism, and emerged from the very peculiar Revolutionary Communist Party.
As George Monbiot noted, O'Neill's group has travelled "from the most distant fringes of the left to the extremities of the pro-corporate libertarian right" and it has never ceased being divisive and disruptive.
Explains Monbiot: "The organisation began in the late 1970s as a Trotskyist splinter called the Revolutionary Communist party. It immediately set out to destroy competing oppositionist movements. When nurses and cleaners marched for better pay, it picketed their demonstrations. It moved into the gay rights group Outrage and sought to shut it down. It tried to disrupt the miners' strike, undermined the Anti-Nazi League and nearly destroyed the radical Polytechnic of North London. On at least two occasions RCP activists physically attacked members of opposing factions."
Fake radical Brendan O'Neill addressing Australia's Centre for Independent Studies, which promotes "the rule of law" and "free enterprise"
O'Neill, like Spiked as a whole, has a particular love of industrial capitalism and can barely suppress his hatred for anyone who dares to put the health of the environment above the quest for endless economic growth.
Indeed, he has specifically complained that environment protest "contributes to the increasingly mainstream hostility to economic growth".
And he described eco-activists opposed to the third runway at Heathrow as "plummy-voiced enemies of progress, those most entitled and eco-pompous of millennials".
He has also condemned the"leftish set's warped, myopic anti-Semitism" and "the way in which attacking Israel has become a means of being derogatory about Jews".
His Wikipedia entry describes him "a keynote speaker for the pro-Israel advocacy organisation StandWithUs".
Meanwhile, over in France, the new "centrist" president Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker, has announced that he wants to further extend the country's State of Emergency, for the sixth time since the Paris attacks of November 2015, and bring in unspecified new "anti-terror" laws.
And "anti-terrorism" was said to be high on the agenda of the NATO summit in Brussels this week (see Acorninfo, below) where Macron was meeting with counterparts such as Theresa May and Donald Trump.
Rabid support for industrial capitalism, bitter opposition to environmentalism, anti-Muslim rhetoric, hysterical calls for "action" in response to terror attacks… Funny how so many of these people seem to be reading from the same centralised script…
Resisting the Psychology of Terror
Terrorism and the state – learning from history
2. Extremists of the neoliberal "centre"
New French president Emmanuel Macron
One of the most insidious terms on the contemporary European political scene is "centrist".
It is a label claimed by the new French president Emmanuel Macron as well as by former UK prime minister Tony Blair.
And it is insidious because it is used to define extreme neoliberal capitalism as a norm, as a default position, as a "common sense" non-ideology whose assumptions and aims can never be fundamentally challenged, except by "extremists".
Centrists like to make great play of being beyond the "divisive" politics of left and right and yet are always happy to exploit those divisions to cement their own position.
Thus Macron's supporters in France urged left-wingers to vote for him to keep out the extreme-right Front National and condemned defeated left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon for not ordering his supporters to vote for Macron in the second round.
Tony Blair – another warmongering neoliberal "centrist"
Fellow "centrist" Blair saw Macron's election as "a real victory for a more global approach to politics", adding that he represented "a spirit which has echoes in every European country and in the western world in general".
Blair's supporters in the UK like to claim that the "populism" of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn is a mirror image of the right-wing populism of Donald Trump – the centrist line is always to lump all "extremists" together and suggest that if you go far enough round the "political spectrum" in either direction you will end up in the extremist hell of a kind of Nazi-Soviet pact, an anti-American, anti-semitic red-brown alliance that poses a chilling danger to strong and stable democratic values.
From the point of view of the centrist, which is of course well represented in the corporate media, anti-capitalism is peripheral and dangerous, always liable to open a Pandora's box of hateful savagery.
This strategy is, unfortunately, very successful in terms of preventing the emergence of an anti-capitalist worldview that is capable of challenging reality as presented by the centrists.
Another inspiring revolutionary slogan from the mainstream "left"
Too many critics of neoliberalism allow themselves to be contained within the narrow political frameworks constructed by the dominant capitalist system.
Because centrists say that opposition to neoliberal globalisation amounts to a form of nationalism, some leftists are suckered into speaking in terms of "national" sovereignty as a bulwark against global Capital, rather than espousing a radical rejection both of the capitalist system and of the nation-states which maintain and enforce it.
Because centrists are always claiming that their policies are best for "growth" and for "creating jobs", some leftists feel they have to justify their own policies using the same criteria.
Because centrists argue that the only alternative to imposing austerity is for states to borrow yet more money, some so-called left-wingers fall into their trap of proposing more debt to the bankers rather than the abolition of the whole capitalist money-system.
Because it seems obvious that, given the nature of elections and the shaping of public opinion, nobody can win an election on an authentically anti-capitalist platform, those leftists who engage on the electoral level of politics drop all real anti-capitalism from their rhetoric and programmes, and make do with reformism.
But this is a big mistake. They are not tailoring their politics to match the views of the public, but to match the views of the public as presented by the neoliberal centrists!
They are buying into the centrist line that the vast majority of the population are very happy with the way the world is organised and are firmly opposed to any fundamental change.
But what if that is simply not true? What if most people are sick to death of this hollow, money-fixated society and are longing for something else? What if most people are horribly aware of the dull limits of their daily grind, their daily consumption, and dream of a different existence?
What if most people are appalled by the spiralling destruction of the natural world, the police-state surveillance of every nook and cranny of their lives, the hypocritical warmongering propaganda churned out by the system's media?
What if they are just waiting for someone to speak the truth, to say plainly that industrial society is a disaster, that the grey capitalist world of production, exploitation and consumption is a world not worth living in, that there are more important things than money, that things could be so very different, so much better, if only we could smash down the walls of the cells in which have been imprisoned?
Where is the passion? Where is the rage? Where is the desire? Where are the calls to insurrection, to revolution, capable of stirring up a powerful groundswell of contempt for the self-defined centrists and everything they represent?
3. The CIA and the war of ideas
It is not entirely accidental that there is a distinct lack of a coherent and vibrant ideological opposition to capitalism.
For many decades the agents of capitalist power, notably the CIA, have been engaged in what the Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci called a "war of ideas" to prevent any such movement arising.
Robin Ramsay of Lobster magazine, a specialist in secretive US interference in UK politics and culture, writes: "Much of the international political landscape of the postwar era in Britain consisted of US-funded or directed political projects – propaganda or psychological warfare projects they would now be called. And this was on top of the formal military-diplomatic-financial structure of NATO, the IMF, World Bank, Gatt, the UN etc."
The pro-US, pro-Israeli, pro-imperialist "left" in Germany
In Germany, there has long been suspicion that American influence might have been behind the emergence of the "antideutsch" strain of leftism which conveniently combined anti-fascism with a fervent admiration for American imperialism and Israeli repression of Palestinians.
And a fascinating recently-released CIA document sheds some light on American capitalist attitudes to the "French Theory" philosophical movement which gave birth to postmodernism, postfeminism, postanarchism and that whole pompous school of pseudo-radical academic thinking which delights in pouring cold water on all notions of overturning capitalist hegemony and creating the other world for which we yearn.
The document, written in 1985, radiates with American self-congratulation that the anti-capitalist ideas which had been so powerful in France in 1968 had now been replaced by a philosophy that was friendly to US corporate and military interests.
It declares: "There is a new climate of intellectual opinion in France – a spirit of anti-Marxism and anti-Sovietism that will make it difficult for anyone to mobilize significant intellectual opposition to US policies.
"Nor will French intellectuals be likely to lend their weight, as they did before, to other West European colleagues who have become hostile to the United States on broad issues like disarmament."
This shift in attitudes, it reports with evident delight, had been "weakening the traditional anti-Americanism of the leftist intellectuals and allowing American culture and even political and economic policies to find new vogue".
The CIA reveal themselves to be very keen on "New Philosopher" Bernard-Henri Lévy, known as BHL in France, whose position of power at the Grasset publishing house was crucial in spreading the US-friendly ideology he was promoting.
BHL – a repeated target of anti-capitalist pie-throwing.
They also single out for ideological praise "the influential structuralist school associated with Claude Levi-Strauss, Foucault, and others".
Of vital importance for the CIA is the destruction of an intellectual climate critical of capitalism and the imposition of a US-style money-orientated culture. They report gleefully: "There is no gainsaying that French youth, who once joined every new intellectual fad, now think of careers in science or business".
The US agents note the rise of "a new wave of genuinely pro-American sentiment, rooted in the vogue of American popular culture, in respect for the American economic vitality of the 1980s, and in admiration for the new image of self-confidence that the United States now projects in the world."
Opening up France to the rich delights of American culture
In a perceptive article on the implications of the CIA document, US philosopher and writer Gabriel Rockhill notes that it "should come as no surprise to those familiar with the CIA's longstanding and ongoing investment in a global cultural war, including support for its most avant-garde forms".
He notes that the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which was headquartered in Paris and later discovered to be a CIA front organization during the cultural Cold War, was among the most important patrons in world history, supporting an incredible range of artistic and intellectual activities.
It had offices in 35 countries, published dozens of prestige magazines, was involved in the book industry, organized high-profile international conferences and art exhibits, coordinated performances and concerts, and contributed ample funding to various cultural awards and fellowships, as well as to front organizations like the Farfield Foundation.
Rockhill states: "The intelligence agency understands culture and theory to be crucial weapons in the overall arsenal it deploys to perpetuate US interests around the world."
Former Marxists are particularly useful in channelling their propaganda as they provide "the perfect model for constructing deceptive narratives that amalgamate purported personal political growth with the progressive march of time, as if both individual life and history were simply a matter of 'growing up' and recognizing that profound egalitarian social transformation is a thing of the—personal and historical—past."
Rockhill adds: "This patronizing, omniscient defeatism not only serves to discredit new movements, particularly those driven by the youth, but it also mischaracterizes the relative successes of counter-revolutionary repression as the natural progress of history."
He correctly identifies the key aim of the CIA's overall strategy to dismantle the cultural left in Europe and elsewhere as not being to abolish it entirely, which wasn't regarded as possible, but instead "to move leftist culture away from resolute anti-capitalist and transformative politics toward center-left reformist positions that are less overtly critical of US foreign and domestic policies".
There we have it. It's the centre again. Indeed, the CIA report itself predicts that New Left intellectuals will weigh in heavily in supporting "moderate Socialists who are trying to create a broadbased center-left alliance".
And the important point that Rockhill is making is that the CIA's pro-capitalist contamination goes much deeper than mere party politics and into the heart of the contemporary ways of thinking that are considered by many self-defined radicals to be central to their "alternative" view of the world.
He says: "The CIA's reading of French theory should give us pause to reconsider the radical chic veneer that has accompanied much of its Anglophone reception.
"According to a stagist conception of progressive history (which is usually blind to its implicit teleology), the work of figures like Foucault, Derrida and other cutting-edge French theorists is often intuitively affiliated with a form of profound and sophisticated critique that presumably far surpasses anything found in the socialist, Marxist or anarchist traditions."
But the apparent sophistication of the postmodern position is simply intellectual bait in the CIA trap into which large sections of the so-called "left" have fallen.
As Rockhill writes: "According to the spy agency itself, post-Marxist French theory directly contributed to the CIA's cultural program of coaxing the left toward the right, while discrediting anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, thereby creating an intellectual environment in which their imperial projects could be pursued unhindered by serious critical scrutiny from the intelligentsia."
Of course, the one thing the CIA report does not do is to spell out the US agency's clandestine role in bringing about this cultural shift away from genuine anti-capitalism and towards pro-imperialist postleftism, whether in France, Germany, the UK or elsewhere.
But then, they don't really have to. Some of us are still perfectly capable of reading between the lines…
Exposed: fake "left-wingers" who hate the alternative media
4. Enemy of the system – the US campaign against Julian Assange
The shocking way that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been intimidated and smeared by the pro-American neoliberal system has been condemned by investigative journalist John Pilger.
He writes on his website: "For almost seven years, this epic miscarriage of justice has been drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. There are few precedents.
"Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks have been aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife."
Prosecutors in Sweden have now announced that they are suspending their investigation of highly dubious rape allegations against Assange, who has been sheltering in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for five years to avoid extradition via Sweden to the USA.
"That the US threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, and to the principle of free speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious. I would call it anti-journalism," writes veteran anti-imperialist Pilger.
"Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.
"The previous editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, 'one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years'. Yet no attempt was made to protect the Guardian's provider and source. Instead, the 'scoop' became part of a marketing plan to raise the newspaper's cover price.
"With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book's authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a 'damaged personality' and 'callous'. They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that 'Scotland Yard may get the last laugh'.
"Journalism students might well study this period to understand that the most ubiquitous source of 'fake news' is from within a media self-ordained with a false respectability and an extension of the authority and power it claims to challenge but courts and protects."
And the reason for the unprecedented and co-ordinated judicial-media attacks on Assange, whom some useful idiots on the fake "left" are also happy to condemn? It is simply, Pilger points out, that "WikiLeaks has exposed the way America dominates much of human affairs, including its epic crimes, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale, often homicidal killing of civilians".
Challenging the criminal hegemony of the US-dominated global capitalist mafia remains the number one contemporary political heresy, it seems…
5. Money, power and mining
"All the power's in the hands
Of people rich enough to buy it"
As The Clash once pointed out, the close relationship between money and power is at the corrupt heart of our capitalist society.
Money buys power and money is used by those in power to ensure that money and power remain permanently in the same elite hands at the expense of the rest of the population and of the natural world.
Take, for instance, the experience of residents living close to the UK's largest opencast coalmine at Ffos-y-Fran near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales.
Since 2007, they have been enduring what can only be described as a nightmare, with horrific levels of air and noise pollution, with cancer clusters and disturbingly high rates of childhood asthma.
Resident Alyson Austin told the BBC her family's life had been ruined by the coal dust: "I find it difficult to put the washing out on the clothes line or enjoy my garden. On hot days we can't even open the windows."
Like good citizens, the locals went through all the "usual channels", including a public inquiry, petitions, protests, High Court legal action and even a report from the UN's special rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes.
But their complaints have been ignored and calls for an investigation into the health implications dismissed.
Five hundred locals attempted to take court action as a group, but their application was refused by the High Court "as they were deemed unable to afford it".
Money always wins. The game is fixed. If you have no money then you have no say in a society where money, and greed for money, is king.
With the democratic process well and truly exhausted – and exposed as a sham – the only way forward was direct action.
Thus, in the early hours of 21 April 2017, under the banner of Earth First! and Reclaim the Power, a bunch of plucky rebels disrupted the mining operations.
At 5am, two of them blocked vehicle access to the mine by using D-locks and an armtube to lock onto the cattle grid at the entrance, while three others climbed down towards the bottom of the vast hole to lock onto the 300 tonne excavators used to extract coal (see video).
No coal mining took place all day.
The response from the system? Guilty of aggravated trespass, they were ordered to pay £10,000 compensation to Miller Argent, the company which is profiting from the misery of the people living alongside its environmentally disastrous mine.
A crowdfunding initiative has been launched to help the brave activists pay off this sum and we would urge people to help out if they can.
In the meantime, we are left with a useful reminder of the fact that the judicial system, in the UK as elsewhere, exists primarily to protect private property and private financial interests. It is designed not only to favour the rich, but to systematically punish the poor for their lack of wealth.
It's a fraud, a scam, which is imposed on us using all the "authorised" violence of a state which has always existed to serve the interests not of ordinary people but of an arrogant ruling class which despises and exploits them in every way possible.
Ten thousand people took to the streets of Brussels on Wednesday May 24 to tell US president Donald Trump, and the imperialist warmongers of NATO, that they were not welcome in the Belgian capital. Said the No to NATO protest call-out: "NATO and its member states participate in illegal wars and military interventions, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. They contribute massively to international instability, fuelling the arms race and militarization. NATO remains committed to humanity's biggest threat: nuclear weapons. NATO is the world's most aggressive war machine. We must leave NATO and NATO must be dissolved."
"By 2050, the US and UK will have evolved into two-class societies where a small elite lives a good life and there is declining well-being for the majority." That is the prediction from Jorgen Randers, an academic and author of 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. He adds: "Western nations are not going to collapse, but the smooth operation and friendly nature of Western society will disappear, because inequity is going to explode." The process seems to be well underway…
A victory has been notched up in the battle to save one of the few museums in the world to be dedicated to the life and works of an anarchist. As we reported in Acorn 33, the Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis Museum at Heerenveen, in the Netherlands, celebrating one of the fathers of Dutch anarchism and libertarian socialism, was faced with closure and a petition was launched to keep it open. This has succeeded in persuading the municipal council of Heerenveen to lift the immediate threat to the museum.
Opponents of plans to frack in North Yorkshire have welcomed confirmation by Barclays that it plans to sell its stake in Third Energy. Barclays owns 97% of Third Energy, which has permission to frack for shale gas at its KM8 well at Kirby Misperton in North Yorkshire. Friends of the Earth described the decision as "a massive blow for the fracking industry" and urged them to keep up pressure on the bank.
Anti-fascists from across the UK are mobilising to oppose the Muslim-hating English Defence League in Liverpool on Saturday June 3. Email London Anti-fascists at ldnantifascists@riseup.net with the subject line COACH2LIVERPOOL to travel from the South of England.
Acorn quote: "Revolutionary movements do not spread by contamination but by resonance. Something that is constituted here resonates within the shock wave emitted by something constituted over there. A body that resonates does so according to its own mode. An insurrection is not like a plague or a forest fire – a linear process which spreads from place to place after an initial spark. It rather takes the shape of a music, whose focal points, though dispersed in time and space, succeed in imposing the rhythm of their own vibrations, always taking on more density. To the point that any return to normal is no longer desirable or even imaginable".
Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection
Posted in Anarchism, The AcornTagged Allison Pearson, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, Antideutsch, Antonio Gramsci, Belgium, BHL, Brendan O'Neill, capitalism, centrism, CIA, Congress for Cultural Freedom, democracy, Donald Trump, Drill or Drop, Earth First!, Emmanuel Macron, extremism, fascism, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, Ffos-y-Fran, Fracking, france, Gabriel Rockhill, George Monbiot, John Pilger, Julian Assange, Katie Hopkins, Liverpool, Manchester, NATO, Netherlands, police, racism, RCP, Reclaim the Power, Robin Ramsay, Spiked, terrorism, Theresa May, Tony Blair, war of ideas, Wikileaks2 Comments
Posted on April 7, 2017 April 7, 2017 by winter oak
Stepping up the battle against fracking
Three victories in fight to protect Sussex countryside
Uprising paralyses French colony
British state goes to court for the arms trade
So what exactly is "extremist material"?
1. Stepping up the battle against fracking
Resistance to fracking in the UK has moved up a significant notch over the last two weeks, with the launch of a series of actions against the whole support infrastructure for the toxic industry.
One activist told media: "Since last Monday Reclaim the Power has taken action against quarries, water suppliers, haulage companies, PR firms and gas companies – all with direct links to the fracking industry. By taking out the links in the supply chain we can break the whole industry into pieces. It is now or never to stop fracking in its tracks."
The Break the Chain initiative is continuing until Monday April 10, so there are a few more surprises in store yet – see here for updates on actions.
Even as this bulletin was being completed, on the morning of Friday April 7, news came in from the north of England of a blockade of PR Marriott, supplier of drills to the fracking industry. There was a tripod, three lock-ons and a banner drop.
Other highlights so far include:
Opponents of fracking in Lancashire blockaded the gates of fracking contractors A.E. Yates in Bolton. Road haulage firm Eddie Stobart also had its depot in Warrington blocked. This was part of successful ongoing local campaign, which previously saw quarry operators Armstrong Aggregates cancel a contract to supply AE Yates and drilling firm Cuadrilla with materials for the building of the shale gas exploration site at Little Plumpton after dozens of Bolton Against Fracking protesters targeted the Montcliffe Quarry.
Aggregate Industries had to work stop at their quarry in Carnforth, Lancs, when protesters on swings took over height restriction bars at two key access points. One of the protesters explained: "We're up here today because fracking isn't a playground game. We need to give Aggregate Industries a reason to rethink its position, which is at odds with local democracy."
Three protesters dressed as brides chained themselves to the door of London PR firm St Brides Partners, declaring that PR firms that are "wedded to the fracking industry are locking the UK into a toxic marriage that funds dangerous and unwanted unconventional oil and gas in the UK".
A group of anti-fracking campaigners held a party for Centrica's chief executive, Iain Connor, at the company's head office, to "celebrate" his £1.4m bonus.
Cuadrilla's shale gas site at Preston New Road, Little Plumpton, Lancashire, was closed by protesters.
Activist clowns staged a wrestling match outside Barclays in Piccadilly Circus, London, in protest at its 97% stake in fracking company Third Energy.
Bare-backed protesters spelled out an anti-fracking slogan and staged a noise demonstration in protest at Union Jack Oil's stall at London's UK Investor show. Said Reclaim the Power: "Everyone is becoming more aware of the equipment suppliers and haulage companies propping up the fracking industry because they are physically visible delivering to the fracking site in Lancashire. Events like these are doing the dirty work behind the scenes and are just as implicated and dangerous. They should be exposed."
With at least five companies in the fracking supply chain having already pulled out after public pressure, the strategy behind Break the Chain could well have found a weak spot in the enemy's armour.
We can now expect the fracking industry and their friends in high places to step up their efforts both to intimidate opponents and to demonise them as dangerous "extremists" (see below).
Indeed, Morecambe and Lunesdale's Tory MP David Morris has already got the ball rolling by declaring of the quarry blockade: "I condemn in the strongest terms this irresponsible intimidation of companies and road users trying to go about their lawful business and get on with their daily lives."
But with massive support for campaigners, and less than one in five of the UK public now said to support fracking, this is a battle the powers-that-be may yet lose…
2. Three victories in fight to protect Sussex countryside
Three significant victories have been won in the struggle to protect the countryside in Sussex, England, in recent weeks, showing once again that determined local resistance can pay off.
Campaigners in both Eastbourne and Brighton have now joined land-defenders in Worthing in having defeated sneaky council proposals to sell off publicly-owned downland.
Dave Bangs of Keep Our Downs Public, a naturalist and author of three books on the Downs and the Weald, told The Ecologist: "This is the fourth time we've had to defend these public estates. These are struggles against privatisation that can be won. These resources are valuable to everyone, so you can get very broad alliances of people."
Added journalist Jan Goodey: "This current south coast battle is of national significance: if a major part of the public estate is destroyed the prospect for landscape conservation becomes ever more precarious. The countryside could be further opened up to plutocratic predators, including many super-rich foreign investors."
In Brighton the council's U-turn came as a result of what Green MEP Keith Taylor called "an organised, passionate and energetic campaign to stop the sales".
Eastbourne council was forced to concede defeat, after a cunning plan to persuade people to vote for the land sell-off spectacularly backfired. Locals saw through the false choice of either "service cuts" or "downs sell-off" and 75% of them voted for the (supposed) cuts and thus in favour of protecting the downland.
Sally Boys, of Keep Our Downs Public, said: "Eastbourne people have shown that we can see through the spin and unfair choice offered by the so-called 'consultation' in the Eastbourne Review. Above all, we have shown that the people of Eastbourne love and cherish their downs and will fight to protect them. The downland belongs to us all."
The depth of feeling behind the Eastbourne campaign was apparent during a ceremony on the Downs in which the land was declared to be sacred to Sussex people, in the same way as the threatened land and water at Standing Rock in the USA are sacred to the Sioux people.
Campaigners were told: "This land is our land, not only because we own it, but because this is sacred land, the land where our forebears are buried in the barrows we see across this land.
"This land is the land of our ancestors, and we would not be here, not be the people we are today, without them. Just as we honour our ancestors today in this ceremony that reconnects us with them and with the land they cared for, so we honour our ancestors by fulfilling the sacred trust placed in us by the people of Eastbourne in 1926 to care for this land.
"And care for it we must, because, as the Standing Rock Sioux have shown by their shining example, we have to stand up as the Water Protectors of our time, in this place, on this, our land, because this land is also our source of water. This land is the aquifer that supplies our drinking water and makes it safe enough to drink. As the Standing Rock Sioux say so well, Water is Life. Without Water, there is no Life.
"So we own this land because we deserve to own this land, and we deserve to own this land because we are willing to care for this land, to protect it for all the wildlife here and for all the people of Eastbourne, and for all the people around this world who recognise with us how special, unique, and important this land is. We own this land because we belong to this land just as much as this land belongs to us."
The third Sussex victory came in Chichester, where the government scrapped plans for £250 million A27 road "improvements" in the face of what it called "significant local campaigns", just days before Highways England was due to announce its preferred route.
The local business lobby, along with its placemen on the local council and its cheerleaders in the local media, have reacted furiously to the news and are trying to pressure the government into reinstating the road scheme.
These road enthusiasts would do well to have a look at the latest report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) entitled: The end of the road? Challenging the road-building consensus.
This shows that all the talk of new roads "easing congestion" is baseless propaganda.
The CPRE's Shaun Spiers commented: "Evidence from the 13 cases analysed in detail for traffic impact concluded that road schemes generate more traffic. On average, traffic grew 47% more than background levels, with one scheme more than doubling traffic within 20 years. None of the four schemes assessed in the longer-term showed the promised reduction in congestion; all put pressure on adjoining roads".
And, he added, the price to pay was a high one: "Sixty-nine out of 86 road schemes examined had an adverse impact on the landscape – not just obliterating views, but destroying ancient woodland and mature hedgerows. More than half damaged an area with national or local landscape designations for landscape, biodiversity or heritage".
If the authorities choose to take no heed of polite warnings from the likes of the CPRE, then it will be down to the people themselves, in Sussex and elsewhere, to launch more "organised, passionate and energetic" campaigns to protect the sacred land to which they belong.
3. Uprising paralyses French colony
The French state is facing a major uprising in one of its remaining colonies in South America.
French Guiana, an overseas territory which is officially part of France and the EU, has been brought to a standstill by a general strike and massive social protest movement.
Roads have been barricaded, businesses closed and protesters this week temporarily occupied and shut down the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, where European Ariane rockets are launched.
French Guiana is an Amazonian territory north of Brazil, which is the size of Scotland but has a population of only 250,000.
The people's grievances are varied, broadly boiling down to the fact that they feel like second-class citizens who are ignored by Paris.
While the French state benefits from the prestigious rocket launch site, 15% of the local population has no drinking water and 44% of the children leave school at primary level.
The "who we are" section of the website of the Pou Lagwiyann Dékolé collective, founded on March 28 2017, states: "We are the inhabitants of French Guiana. We are the people of French Guiana. We are one. We have risen up like one man to declare our unity."
A very high-profile protest group called the 500 Brothers are calling for more security in a country hit by crime – and their appearance and rhetoric has alienated many of the uprising's potential supporters in Europe.
One French anarchist currently in the territory was asked about the 500 Brothers in an interview and commented: "I see it as a reactionary thing. I've asked a lot of questions and talked to people, but I don't really understand what's behind this massive support for the 500 Brothers."
But another French commentator said: "We are all Guianese because the contempt they are feeling from the ruling class echoes the general feeling that is being voiced everywhere in France.
"All the parties of government are guilty and responsible for this dire situation. All of them have failed and are grovelling to the supporters of the financial oligarchy. In French Guiana as elsewhere, a wind of change is blowing… and not before time!"
4. British state goes to court for the arms trade
The British state is trying to overturn an important legal victory in the fight against the arms trade.
On 15th April 2016, eight activists were acquitted at Stratford Magistrates Court in London of obstructing a road outside the DSEI arms fair the previous September.
They successfully argued that their actions were justified, as they were trying to prevent greater crimes taking place, including the marketing of torture weapons, repression in Bahrain and the mass indiscriminate killing of civilians in Yemen, Palestine and Kurdistan.
On acquitting the activists, District Judge Angus Hamilton had held that there had been "clear, credible and largely unchallenged evidence from the expert witnesses of wrongdoing at DSEI and compelling evidence that it took place in 2015."
Following the verdict, the UK state's Crown Prosecution Service twice sought to appeal the acquittals, but was turned down on the basis that the CPS applications were "dishonest", "frivolous" and "misconceived". The CPS finally applied directly to the High Court seeking a judicial review of the activists' acquittal.
It is hardly surprising that the UK state is desperate to overturn a verdict which directly challenges its support for, and close collaboration with, the arms industry and the regimes which buy its products.
It does not even dispute any of the facts found by the Magistrates Court as to wrongdoing at the arms fair and complicity of its regular invitees in ongoing war crimes. It simply says that the judge should not have allowed this evidence to be heard.
From the state's point of view, the judge's decision was outrageous. That's not how the law is supposed to work! That's not how the game is meant to be played!
The law was devised in order to protect Power and to justify the violence used by Power. If you are an enemy of Power, blocking a road is a crime. If you are a friend of Power, killing or torturing people is not a crime.
It's not about "right" and "wrong", but about "legal" and "illegal". And it is Power which decides how "legal" and "illegal" are defined.
Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) said: "The campaigners should not be getting pursued for protesting – it should have been the arms dealers who have fuelled and facilitated war and oppression around the world.
"The arms trade is an illegitimate, immoral trade, and events like DSEI are central to it. Whatever the verdict, we need to mobilise the biggest possible opposition when it returns to London later this year. DSEI brings the world's biggest arms companies together with some of the world's most oppressive regimes. It needs to be closed down for good."
In a joint public statement, the defendants' campaign said: "The CPS cannot dispute any of the findings of fact made at our trial concerning criminality at DSEI, or the high probability that weapons bought there would be used for war crimes.
"How could they, when every credible authoritative source only serves to confirm that the UK government and other repeat DSEI invitees such as Saudi and its coalition allies are solidly and persistently complicit in the mass indiscriminate killing of civilians? It is little wonder then, that the CPS should seek to prohibit the admission of such evidence in court on arbitrary procedural grounds, arguing that expert evidence should not have been allowed to be heard by the court at all.
"For us it is clear that there is not only a right – but also a profound responsibility – for each of us to do all we can to stop war crimes and crimes against humanity where they start."
Hajar Mansoor Hasan (second from right), apparently targeted by authorities in retribution for the human rights work of her son-in-law, Sayed al-Wadaei. Also pictured are Hasan's children, aged 13 and 11, and mother, 90.
At the same time that the case against DSEI activists was being reopened, two family members of expert witness Sayed Ahmed al-Wadaei – who gave evidence at the activists' trial – were detained by the Bahraini government in retribution for his speaking out about human rights abuses perpetrated by the regime.
His mother in law and brother in law are still being held and there is grave concern for their safety following reports that they have been subjected to torture.
More info on resistance to the 2017 DSEI arms fair here and here.
5. So what exactly is "extremist material"?
The UK is ramping up its attack on online freedom, seizing on the excuse of last month's Westminster Bridge attack to try and outlaw encrypted messaging.
It is also considering legislation to force firms to "take down extremist material" from the internet, although details of what this might involve are not yet clear.
The state's definition of "extremism" has been left deliberately vague and in other contexts has already been applied to anarchism, anti-fascism and the growing frack-free movement.
Banning this kind of political content from social media or other websites might seem to be out of the question in a country that likes to claim it is a "democracy", but it would be in line with increasingly repressive official attitudes.
After the Investigatory Powers Act was passed last year, no fewer than 48 government bodies – including the Food Standards Agency and Department for Work and Pensions – can view a record of the websites people have visited in the past year.
A year and a half ago, Theresa May launched a "counter-extremism strategy" which amounts to a McCarthyite witch hunt which The Guardian described as being targeted "against 'entryist' infiltration of the public sector, charities and businesses by Islamist and other extremists".
The term "other extremists" stands out here. The UK Government defines "extremism" as vocal or active opposition to what it calls "fundamental British values", by which it of course means the "values" of the British state, such as waging imperialist wars and protecting the arms trade that profits from them (see above).
Police monitoring group Netpol says it has spoken to many people "who are alarmed by the stifling of political debate in schools and in further and higher education – including discussion on issues like 'eco-terrorism' and support for Palestine – and who are more worried than ever about attending political meetings or engaging in online discussion".
Does "removing extremism" from the internet simply mean trying to ban dissent? We can tell them now – it won't work!
Hundreds of demonstrators set fire to the National Congress building in Asuncion, Paraguay, on the night of March 31, in a furious reaction to a secret vote for a constitutional amendment allowing right-wing President Horacio Cartes to run for re-election. A 25-year-old opposition activist was later shot dead during a police raid.
Two protests against the environmentally disastrous Drax Power Station will be held in the UK on Thursday April 13. One is planned for York from 10.30pm until 2pm, where Drax's shareholders are meeting at The Royal York Hotel York (The Principle York), close to York rail station. On the same day in London a colourful protest will visit some of Drax's key investors from 12 noon until 2pm – meet in Gresham Street.
Encouraging people to take direct action in the defence of the environment is not always easy, particularly when they have the impression that this is something only carried out by semi-professional activists. One video that could very usefully be shown to the public, with this in mind, is La Bataille de l'Eau Noire. This inspiring and entertaining documentary tells of a village in Belgium threatened by a dam in 1978, and hears from a cross-section of decidedly non-"activist" locals as to how they unleashed guerrilla warfare to successfully see off the project. The DVD comes with English subtitles and copies are being offered to groups involved in struggles who would like to arrange screenings. Contact benjaminhennot@yahoo.fr
Pro-capitalist trade union GMB has called for police and courts to take "a firm line" against opponents of fracking, reports Drill or Drop. As we have previously revealed here, GMB is very much in bed with the oil and gas business mafia and has even done a deal with UKOOG, the front group representing the fracking industry in the UK. Freedom News commented that the sell-out union's latest statement comes "in an apparent total disregarding of the long history of police dirty tactics breaking strikes and picket lines in Britain, as well as numerous reports of police misbehaviour against fracking protesters".
Anti-capitalists gearing up for the big protests against the G20 in Hamburg this summer launched a spectacular attack on a police station on the Grundstrasse in Hamburg in the early hours of March 26, setting the police vans in the yard on fire. In a statement translated by Insurrection News, the activists explained: "Our target was selected with care, the repressive machinery has been working at full speed on the criminalization of the resistance".
A petition has been launched to save from closure one of the few museums in the world to be dedicated to the life and works of an anarchist. The Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis Museum at Heerenveen, in the Netherlands, celebrates one of the fathers of Dutch anarchism and libertarian socialism, who was also active in the vegetarian and anti-militarist movements. The petition can be signed here.
Indigenous resistance to industrial capitalism and the thorny issue of the "enemy within" in the shape of "Peace Police", sell-out NGOs and corrupt "tribal government" – this is the subject matter of the first in a series of monthly documentaries by sub.media, going under the name of Trouble. Well worth a look!
A pioneering UK academic publishing project is aiming to make first-rate scholarship on anarchism freely accessible through a sustainable publishing model. Alexandre Christoyannopoulos of Loughborough University explained that the first volume of Essays in Anarchism and Religion is already in production and now a crowdfunding scheme has been extended in a bid to fund the next two volumes.
Acorn quote: "In a culture where profit has become the true God, self-sacrifice can seem incomprehensible rather than noble".
Starhawk, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising
Posted in Anarchism, The AcornTagged #BreakTheChain, A27, anarchy, anti-capitalism, arms fair, Belgium, Brighton, capitalism, Chichester, civilization, climate, democracy, Drax, Drill or Drop, DSEI, Eastbourne, extremism, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, Fracking, france, French Guiana, G20, GMB, Guyane, Hamburg, Heathrow, Keep our Downs public, London, Netherlands, Paraguay, police, Reclaim the Power, roads, Sussex, Trouble2 Comments


text:
Charles R. Burton
Charles Robert Burton (13 December 1942 – 15 July 2002) was an English explorer, best known for his part in the Transglobe Expedition, the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe from pole to pole.[1] Serving as cook, radio operator, and mechanic, he was the only member of the team to accompany the expedition's leader, Ranulph Fiennes, on the entire route.[2][3]
Burton was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He attended Millfield school in Somerset, where he excelled more in sports than academics.[4] From 1961-1967, he was a soldier in the British Army, serving with the elite Special Air Service and traveling to the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Malta, and Germany. After his military career, Burton held odd jobs, mainly with various private security firms.[5]
While bartending at The Admiral Codrington pub in Chelsea in 1975, he met Fiennes, with whom he spent some four years organizing and raising money for the Transglobe Expedition. After the expedition, which lasted from 1979-1982, Burton returned to the security business. Ten years later, he helped Fiennes organize another expedition, but declined to participate.[6][7]
Burton married Thelma "Twink" Petts in April 1981 in Sydney, Australia, while on the Transglobe Expedition.[8] He died of a heart attack on 15 July 2002 at his family home in the village of Framfield in Sussex.[5]
^ "Charles Burton, 59; Circumnavigated Globe". Los Angeles Times. 2002-07-18. Retrieved 2014-02-18. Charles Burton, a British explorer who took part in the first expedition to circumnavigate the world from pole to pole, has died.
^ Shephard, Oliver (2002-07-20). "Charles Burton: Explorer who fuelled the world's first transglobe expedition with laughter". The Guardian. Retrieved 2014-02-18.
^ "Charles Burton, 59, British Explorer". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 2002-07-17. Retrieved 2014-02-18.
^ Biographies: "Charlie Burton - Ice Team / Mechanic / Cook." Transglobe Expedition official site. Accessed 19 Feb. 2014.
^ a b Lewis, Paul (2002-07-17). "Charles Burton, 59, a Pole-to-Pole Explorer". New York Times. Retrieved 2014-02-18.
^ Biographies: "Charlie Burton - Ice Team/Mechanic/Cook." Transglobe Expedition official site. Accessed 19 Feb. 2014.
^ Obituaries. "Charlie Burton (1943 - 2002)." Transglobe Expedition official site. Accessed 19 Feb. 2014.
^ "She's gone for a Burton." The Sydney Morning Herald. 12 April 1981. Accessed 19 Feb. 2014.
Transglobe Expedition biographies
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English explorers
People educated at Millfield
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History of Antarctica
The history of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe. The term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle, was coined by Marinus of Tyre in the 2nd century AD.
Circumnavigation is the complete navigation around an entire island, continent, or astronomical body. This article focuses on the circumnavigation of Earth.
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen
Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, a Baltic German naval officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, cartographer and explorer, who ultimately rose to the rank of admiral. He participated in the First Russian circumnavigation of the globe and subsequently became a leader of another circumnavigation expedition that discovered the continent of Antarctica.
Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet, commonly known as Ranulph "Ran" Fiennes, is an English explorer and holder of several endurance records. He is also a writer and poet.
Wally Herbert
Sir Walter William "Wally" Herbert was a British polar explorer, writer and artist. In 1969 he became the first man fully recognized for walking to the North Pole, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's famous, but disputed, expedition. He was described by Sir Ranulph Fiennes as "the greatest polar explorer of our time".
List of Antarctic expeditions
This list of Antarctic expeditions is a chronological list of expeditions involving Antarctica. Although the existence of a southern continent had been hypothesized as early as the writings of Ptolemy in the 1st century AD, the South Pole was not reached until 1911.
List of circumnavigations
This is a list of circumnavigations of the planet Earth. Sections are ordered by ascending date of completion of voyage.
Captain John Gore was a British American sailor who circumnavigated the globe four times with the Royal Navy in the 18th century and accompanied Captain James Cook in his discoveries in the Pacific Ocean.
Museum of Ethnography, Sweden
The Museum of Ethnography, in Stockholm, Sweden, is a Swedish science museum. It houses a collection of about 220,000 items relating to the ethnography, or cultural anthropology, of peoples from around the world, including from China, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, the Pacific region, the Americas and Africa. The museum is situated in Museiparken at Gärdet in Stockholm. Since 1999 it is a part of Swedish National Museums of World Culture and is also hosting the Sven Hedin Foundation. The Museum is open Tuesday to Sunday 11:00AM – 5:00 PM, and Wednesdays 11:00 AM – 8:00 PM and is closed on Mondays.
Farthest South was the most southerly latitudes reached by explorers before the conquest of the South Pole in 1911. Significant steps on the road to the pole were the discovery of lands south of Cape Horn in 1619, Captain James Cook's crossing of the Antarctic Circle in 1773, and the earliest confirmed sightings of the Antarctic mainland in 1820. From the late 19th century onward, the quest for Farthest South latitudes became in effect a race to reach the pole, which culminated in Roald Amundsen's success in December 1911.
Arctic exploration
Arctic exploration is the physical exploration of the Arctic region of the Earth. It refers to the historical period during which mankind has explored the region north of the Arctic Circle. Historical records suggest that humankind have explored the northern extremes since 325 BC, when the ancient Greek sailor Pytheas reached a frozen sea while attempting to find a source of the metal tin. Dangerous oceans and poor weather conditions often fetter explorers attempting to reach polar regions and journeying through these perils by sight, boat, and foot has proven difficult.
William Kronick
William Kronick is an American film and television writer, director and producer. He worked in the film industry from 1960 to 2000, when he segued into writing novels.
Nigel Cox (artist)
Nigel Cox is an Irish figurative artist. He grew up on the edge of Dundalk, a small market town in County Louth, just south of the border.


The KUPP project was initiated by Trygve Helgaker, the leader of the Hylleraas Centre. Several past and present SFFs have made conscious efforts to implement various measures to provide good career support to young researchers, and a collaboration involving eight centres have now been established for a joint effort. The programme is developed in a cooperation between the leadership of the Hylleraas Centre and Senior Advisor Olaug Kristine Bringager at UiO.
raise awareness about an SFF's role, responsibilities, attitudes and targeted activities to support the career development of young researchers.
clarify the activities, services and cultural norms in SFFs that will best support the success of young researchers and actively encourage their career responsibility.
identify improvements and changes that should be tried out and/or introduced.
1st Session: 30 October, from 09.00 to 18.00. Dinner at 19.30. Program and presentations can be found here.
2nd Session: 27 November, from 09:00 to 19:00. Dinner at 19.30. Program.
Here you can read more about KUPP.


Have your prescription drug prices increased? Report it today.
Last year, we worked to pass HB 4005, the Prescription Drug Pricing Transparency Act. Today, we're seeing the results! You can now report your prescription drug price increases in Oregon. The more reports, the more that lawmakers will see the true problem and pass legislation this year to lower costs, including importation of lower priced prescriptions from Canada, 60-day advance notice of price increases, and more.


Ireland and Yorkshire were both featured in our day of talks on 22 October. The Yorkshire writer Blake Morrison, who is half Irish, spoke about growing up near Haworth and his play We Are Three Sisters. Monica Wallace, who recently returned to her native Dublin after five years working in Brussels, returned to Belgium to give us a talk on Charlotte Brontë's Irish honeymoon.
In the course of the talk, in addition to some of his poems, Blake read us extracts from his memoir And when did you last see your father? Made into a film in 2007 starring Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth, it contains many memories of his childhood. By the end of his time with us we had gained many insights into his personal background and the wide range of his literary output as well as becoming acquainted with his Brontë play.
It was good to welcome back Monica Wallace, who has spoken to our group before and was an active member of it when working in Brussels as transport attaché for Ireland in 2009-14. She is now back in Dublin, working for the Irish transport department. For this presentation she researched the family of Charlotte Brontë's husband, the Anglican clergyman Arthur Bell Nicholls, and the route taken by the couple on their honeymoon in the summer of 1854 at the start of their brief marriage (Charlotte died 9 months later in March 1855).
Monica began by filling us in on Nicholls' family – born in County Antrim as one of a large family that was struggling financially, he was adopted at a young age by a more affluent uncle, his mother's brother Alan Bell, who ran a school in Banagher. Arthur never saw his own parents again; his mother died 5 years later. Like Charlotte, he had a stint as a badly-paid teacher when he helped out at his uncle's school. His biographer Alan Adamson (whose widow Monica met on a trip to Canada) speculates that despite Arthur's happiness in his new family, he probably suffered from insecurity as a result of these upheavals and financial problems in his early days.
Monica also filled us in on some of the developments in Irish history in Nicholls' and Patrick Brontë's lifetimes, for example Daniel O'Connell's campaign for Catholic Emancipation, which was followed with interest by the Brontës; the Anglican Patrick Brontë initially opposed it but changed his position. She sketched conditions in Ireland at the time of Charlotte's visit and the often condescending attitudes of English visitors to the country, such as Thackeray.
She then took us on a richly-illustrated tour of the honeymoon route, starting in Dún Laoghaire (where Monica herself lives) and thence to Cuba House, the family home in Banagher, via Dublin. From there, Charlotte and Arthur went on to visit Kilkee, Tarbert in Co. Limerick and Tralee, the Lakes of Killarney and the Gap of Dunloe (where Charlotte escaped unharmed when thrown from her horse) in Co. Kerry. We saw some of the hotels where they stayed and learned that at that period hotels were strictly segregated into Protestant and Catholic.
We gleaned fascinating snippets about Arthur's family, such as that one of his brothers had a daughter named Charlotte Brontë Nicholls, and Banagher: Anthony Trollope lived there in the 1840s in the first years of his marriage and is sure to have met the Bells.
Charlotte may have had some misapprehensions about the Bell family. For example, she appears to have believed that Cuba House was owned by the family (in fact it came courtesy of the school of which Alan Bell was headmaster) and that Nicholls' aunt Bell was educated in England (actually she spent just one week at an English boarding school before being brought back to Ireland as her family missed her). What is certain is that where the Bell family was concerned Charlotte was forced to abandon her prejudices against Ireland, and had nothing but praise for her in-laws' 'gentility' and kindness. She also gave positive reports of her new husband as she began to really get to know him for the first time, in his native country and his family circle.
The first German translation of The Professor was published in 1858 in Stuttgart, translated "Aus dem Englischen von Dr. Büchele", as it says on the title page.
This edition was republished in facsimile form in 2015 by Reink Books, as a print on demand book. A 2016 copy has also been spotted (but we have not included it in the statistical analysis article for that year).
The second and only other translation was published for the first time in 1990, by Ars Vivendi from Cadolzburg (302 pp.). It was done by Gottfried Röckelein, who also translated Jane Eyre.
After the two translations of Villette published in Berlin and Stuttgart in 1853, described earlier, it took until 1971 before a new translation, by Christiane Agricola, was published in Germany. So far it has reached 14 editions, the last one having been published in 2015. The two other translations in German were Swiss. Agricola (1927-2009), was from Leipzig, in (the former state of) East Germany. She also translated Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, and Welsh and Scottish folk tales (even from Welsh apparently!).
The first edition (686 pp.) was published by List from Leipzig. It had an afterword by Helmut Findeisen (from Dresden probably). One suspects that was a marxist interpretation of the novel. No doubt it is a good translation. It is nr. 8 on the list of longest running translations, with a fine 44 years between the first and (so far) last edition, making her the top scorer for the German language.
It was republished the next year by the same publisher, List, but this time in Munich, in West Germany. As it had only 657 pages, with no mention of an afterword, it must be that it was dropped.